Radio communication terminals such as portable telephones and PHSs include those having a mail receiving function. Such terminals include those having a function of notifying a communication terminal user of mail arrival using a ringtone, like in the case of call arrival, upon mail reception, a function of reading out a mail, and a hands-free speech function.
In the case of hands-free setting, a series of operations of these functions can be automatically associated with each other. For example, notification is made using an arrival sound when a mail is received and, further, it is possible to automatically read out the mail using a hands-free speech function of a portable telephone itself or an external hands-free speech device.
However, if the hands-free speech function is not of the headphone type or the like that allows only a user of a portable telephone to hear a sound, but is the type that outputs a sound at a large volume from a loudspeaker of an external device or the portable telephone itself, the sound leaks out so that not only the user of the portable telephone but also others around the user, for example, car passengers or the like, can hear the sound, and thus privacy or secret protection cannot be effectively achieved.
With respect to such a problem, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. 2003-046635 describes an invention that controls display of a caller and hands-free speech/nonspeech based on advance settings, a sender telephone number of a received call, and the state in a car. Further, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. 2004-140731 describes an invention wherein the hands-free function is automatically operated upon detection of the presence/absence of a passenger and that a terminal has been registered in advance, thereby implementing privacy control. Further, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. 2004-147037 describes an invention that controls the hands-free operation according to the presence/absence of a passenger and identification information of a call sender. Further, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. Hei 10-203257 describes an invention that achieves privacy protection by detecting the presence/absence of a passenger and displaying identification information of a call sender at a position recognizable only by a driver upon call arrival.
However, the foregoing conventional privacy protection functions assume a voice call and are not adapted for a mail. Further, whether or not the hands-free is usable is judged based on the results of detecting a call sender telephone number and the presence/absence of a passenger, and so on. Consequently, there is a problem that it is not possible to implement flexible control of hands-free function according to characteristics unique to a mail and the content of a message.
Therefore, in consideration of such a problem, it is an object of this invention to provide a device that analyzes the content of a message, upon message reception, using a message analysis circuit adapted to perform an analysis according to a keyword set in advance and judges as to whether or not a hands-free function is usable, thereby enabling privacy protection in the vicinity of a portable telephone or from a passenger during car driving.